


First One's the Hardest

by joinedunderprotest



Series: At Storm's End a.k.a. the Uncleverse [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Childbirth, Crack, F/M, Fluff, Horror, Pregnancy, but the gendrya fandom is always a slut for feels!, from wacky pregnancy hijinks to ptsd nightmares it's a mess, seriously if those tags didn't clue you in this is just a completely dissonant series of vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-20 01:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20666996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joinedunderprotest/pseuds/joinedunderprotest
Summary: “I think we should name this baby Eddard,” she decides.“Eddard’s a fine name,” he considers. “What about if it’s a girl?”“I think we should name this baby Eddard,” she repeats. Was he not listening closely the first time?-Scenes from Arya's first pregnancy.





	First One's the Hardest

In hindsight, she probably could have figured it out a day earlier.

But, you know, in her defence, what could have been the decisive moment comes right after she’s spent the better part of an evening getting rutted by a bull in heat. So she’s not thinking about a whole lot just then.

Gendry’s the one who plants the seed (_ha!_). He smacks a triumphant kiss between her shoulder blades, and she grunts and shies away, all sexed out for the time being. He just nuzzles her back.

He starts talking. She tries to listen through the thick fog of pleasure clouding her mind.

“I knew those old sons of whores were talking shit,” he boasts.

“Hm?” She wants to ask but she also wants to lie still for a thousand years.

“Before you got here, people couldn’t figure out why I wouldn’t marry,” he explains, settling in beside her. “Some thought the same as Davos, that I had a girl who died, some thought I was too wrapped up in my duties. A couple assumed I took after my uncle Renly.”

Arya snorts.

“There were a few lords who were convinced I was fucking every whore in the southern kingdoms, and I was just more discreet about it than old Robert.”

That would offend her if she were capable of caring about anything right now.

“They said I must be afraid of getting married because I heard that once you get married, you get maybe a month of good sex before it gets boring and you start looking elsewhere to wet your dick. You’d think being a lord would mean I could punch them until they stopped talking, but no. Anyways, I knew they were full of shit. We’ve been married two months today and we’ve fucked every night since the wedding. And most days. Definitely not bored so far, are we?”

_Every night for two months_. There’s something off about that. If she could just clear her sated haze, she knows she’d figure out the problem with it. She could put together why exactly the thought sends up alarm bells in her mind.

But Gendry’s kneading the curve of her arse and the bed is so very warm and soft, and the most she can manage to think about is deciding to take quick a nap before her bull mounts her again.

So yeah, looking back, this would have been a fine time to connect some dots.

-

The dots get connected rather violently the next day.

Arya never imagined that being the Lady of Storm’s End would be easy. Even if she were the perfect lady her mother used to pray she’d magically become someday, some of those shithead fucking lords would still hate her because she’s Northern, because she’s related to traitors, because she’s the wife of a legitimised bastard. They don’t know her. From their perspective, the first time most of them ever heard of her (as anything other than the mysteriously unseen second hostage of House Lannister) was when they received a raven announcing their liege lord had married her. She was no one’s idea of an ideal consort for their Lord Paramount, not even on paper.

The darkness in her that will never fully go away whispers that she could just get rid of them, but her better nature, growing louder all the time, says she’ll prove herself to those lords with time by being a great co-ruler.

Then there’s that other type of lord. The type whose main objection is that she has hysterical notions that she might like to be something other than her husband’s legally bound warm hole. Not much chance of winning them over. They’re never going to approve of their breeches-wearing, sword-wielding, foul-mouthed liege lady.

She’s not going to kill them. She’s not. She’s just saying she wouldn’t exactly be sad if they all fell into a cesspit and drowned.

The first time she accompanied Gendry to a meeting of his bannermen, the lords all gave her funny looks until someone politely asked if she was there to introduce herself or perhaps serve some lovely refreshments when they were finished talking. She kept calm on the outside, but she nearly burst a blood vessel. Now when she arrives, she gets some distinctly unwelcoming looks.

Good. Their resentment is better than their confusion. It means they recognise that she’s there to get things done and she won’t stop any time soon.

But after the latest meeting, she gets stuck talking to Lord Peasebury (sigil: a green pea pod, burst open, on a white field, bordered by three rows of green peas – presumably, the original lord of House Peasebury looked at the golden rose of House Tyrell and wondered how he could make that sigil shitter and less intimidating).

More accurately, she gets stuck getting talked _at_ by Lord Peasebury, while she focuses very hard on not punching him in the face.

“Of course, my lady, we could not be happier that Lord Baratheon has seen fit to wed you,” he lies as if she’s blind and stupid. “It’s true, House Peasebury did hope to see one of our own as his wife.”

House Peasebury has three daughters, all of varyingly pretty countenance but no brains and very little character. The thought of Gendry shackled to some peapod milksop for the rest of his life sends a wave of nausea through her.

She swallows heavily against the sensation, taking in a deep breath to try to settle herself.

“Perhaps, if he had accepted, he might have a more, ah, _appropriate_ wife,” Lord Peasebury drones on, oblivious that he’s about to have his nose broken if Arya can just get her stomach to stop churning, “one who might have better served his needs. Alas, the heart wants what it wants, isn’t that right, my lady?”

Arya wants very dearly to shock him with a comment about how well she serves all of her husband’s needs, but there’s a dawning realisation that opening her mouth would be a terrible idea.

“I have heard of your little adventures, my lady. What fun they must have been. Of course, now that you’re married, I expect it will be time to settle and behave as a wife ought to, being a source of comfort for one’s husband. I don’t doubt the Lord Paramount appreciated your more vivacious qualities, but these are hardly what one looks for in a wife.”

She wants to argue. She wants to fight. She wants to storm off.

She wants to sit down until the dizzy churning passes.

Instead, she leans forward and ejects the contents of her stomach onto Lord Peasebury’s shiny, shiny shoes.

It’s loud. It’s messy. It’s so sudden and sharp she can’t even enjoy ruining the man’s day.

She thinks the hall goes quiet, but it’s hard to tell over the rushing in her ears as she heaves uncontrollably. When she’s thrown up all she has in her, she coughs and sputters, rubbing the back of one hand across her mouth. She becomes aware of Gendry at her side, stroking her back and making soothing sounds as he ushers her out of the room. She leans into him heavily as they walk.

Gendry flags a passing maid – Arya has been learning their names, but everything’s a blur right now – and orders her to see that the mess in the Round Hall is cleaned up, then sends her off. He guides Arya into a quiet side hallway, propping her against a wall and frantically looking her over.

“You all right?” he frets, turning her clammy face from side to side. “Is it something you ate? But we ate together and I feel fine. You’re not sick, are you? Gods, you can’t be sick.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she argues weakly, placing her hands over his. “It just came me over all of a sudden. I haven’t got a fever or anything.”

“Let’s go see Maester Jurne,” Gendry suggests, moving to take her upstairs. She stops him with a pat on the arm.

“I’m not an invalid, Gendry,” she insists with a wan smile. “I can make it up to his quarters on my own. You’ve got to go back in there and smooth things over with Lord Peasebury.”

Gendry makes a face at the thought, but then he’s back to fretting. She doesn’t think he’d appreciate a kiss at the moment, with her breath like this, so she settles for gently stroking his cheek before pushing away from him. She makes her way up the stairs, leaning against the wall as she goes for the first few flights before her strength returns. She stops a few times to double over and heave, but luckily everything she’s eaten today is currently staining Lord Peasebury’s boots, so there’s no additional mess.

Jurne is courteously concerned when she comes in, inviting her to sit as he examines her. She describes the incident as he takes her pulse, peers into her eyes, and taps her belly.

“Could it be something bad?” She put up a brave face in front of Gendry, but in this moment she’s afraid. She’s finally happy, and it would be just her luck if this is when her own body turns against her.

“No, my lady, I don’t believe it is.” Jurne runs a hand over his mouth, but Arya spots the beginnings of a smile beneath.

“If I might ask, my lady, when was the last time you bled?”

As in her moonblood? She bites her lip in thought, and then suddenly her whole face goes slack.

_Every night for two months._

As in, uninterrupted.

Now she knows why that figure was bothering her.

-

Sometime later, Gendry strides into their bedroom, jerkily undoing his clothes like he does when he’s annoyed. Arya, perched on the bed, enjoys the sight of him shedding layers.

Ordinarily, she’d pick up on his irritation and get angry on his behalf in the blink of an eye. Right now, nothing can upset her. She just runs a hand across her stomach as he starts ranting.

“What an absolute waste of skin,” Gendry seethes, throwing his doublet over a chair. “Who does Lord Peas and Carrots think he is? Do you know what he—"

He pauses, remembering himself, and rushes over to her, gripping her knee as he kneels at her side. “What did the maester say? Are you all right? Is it anything serious?”

It’s the most serious thing that’s ever happened to them, but she knows he means to ask if it’s anything bad, so she just shakes her head and tells him to finish his story.

He drops his head in relief and reaches up for a peck on the lips before standing to disrobe again. “Well obviously he wanted an apology, and fair play to him, getting sicked on in is pretty shit. But _then_ he mentions what it was he was talking about when you interrupted him. Can you believe the bloody cheek of him?”

He tears and tugs at his laces, swapping his fine breeches for some soft pants, and climbs up on the bed next to her.

“I took that damned apology back. If any one of them thinks they can walk up to my wife and talk about how you’re not good enough for me, as if you weren’t the world’s greatest bloody hero and smarter than any of that lot, they’re fucking dreaming. I said to him, I said…”

Gendry stares at her, chest heaving with indignation, and then abruptly leans forward for a heavy kiss. Arya’s arms go up around his neck at once, pulling him in closer, warm where’s he pressed up against her.

As he pulls back, her arms still wrapped around him, her eyes flutter open and she gives him a lazy smirk.

“I really hope that isn’t what you said to him,” she says.

He doesn’t jape back, only watches her, eyes glittering with awe. “Sorry, you’re just so pretty right now.”

Arya smirks. “Finally, I have your confession that I don’t look pretty all the time. I knew you’d crack someday.”

“Don’t give me that. You know you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Arya would like to roll her eyes, but she flushes with pleasure instead. She knows no such thing, but she’s starting to suspect that Gendry honestly believes it, and it makes her happier than ever about her news.

“But really,” Gendry continues, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear, “you’re so pretty. It’s like you’re glowing. When I saw you earlier, you were heaving your guts out. What’s got you so—”

Gendry’s breath catches. His eyes go round. Arya’s little smile widens. He’s guessed it.

_“Arya.”_

“Yes, Gendry?” She can’t help drawing it out, just a little. The look on his face is the best thing she’s ever seen.

“Are you—” He brings a shaky hand up to her belly but can’t quite bring himself to touch her there. “Are we gonna—”

Without looking away from him, she untangles an arm from around him and reaches down to the small space between them, taking hold of his hand and bringing it to rest on her stomach.

“We are,” she whispers.

She barely gets those two words out before he’s on her again with a hundred eager kisses, _oh gods_ and_ thank you_s in between each one.

She laughs as they roll around on the bed in a tangle of frenetic joy. They finally come to a stop with Gendry above her, carefully keeping his weight off her midsection.

“You’re sure?” he asks, eyes alight.

“There’s no way to be absolutely certain until the babe quickens,” she answers, heart squeezing around the word _babe_, “but yes. I’m as sure as can be.”

“And when will the quickening be?” Gendry asks eagerly, shifting his weight so he can stroke her stomach again, already eager to feel movement there.

“In the fourth or fifth month, and we’ve only just reached the second—”

“Two months?” Gendry interrupts, a cheeky smile cutting across the pure joy on his face.

Arya runs her knuckles over the line of his jaw, giving him a gentle nudge. “You damned Baratheons and your damned seed.”

Gendry catches her hand and presses a kiss to her palm, then presses the palm to his cheek. “We’re going to have a baby, Arya.”

“We are.”

“A _baby_.”

“Our baby.”

“The three of us. A family.”

“Told you.”

There’s more kissing, more laughter, and when they finally slide into place, Arya has to be on top because Gendry won’t take his hands off her belly.

She was so sure for so long that she would never have love or happiness or family again. It turns out being wrong is pretty wonderful.

-

Gendry’s ridiculous.

She isn’t even _showing_ yet. Her stomach is still smooth and flat, with no hint that there’s a life growing in there, yet Gendry won’t leave it alone. Morning, noon, and night, he’s fascinated by it.

“Morning,” he’ll greet her as they wake wrapped up in each other. Then he’ll untangle himself and scoot down until he’s level with her stomach, and add in a little voice, “And good morning to you, too.”

It’s worse in the evenings. When they crawl in bed together, he rests his head on her and carries on conversations with her stomach. Sometimes he presses his mouth directly to the non-existent curve to speak, and she knows he’s making promises to be good to their child, to be a better father to it than his father ever was to him. Arya turns her head and pretends she can’t hear him when he does that, allowing him his privacy; Gendry didn’t get to sail away for two years to work through his burdens.

But sometimes he just rests his head on her hip and tells the child about his day. All the pointless details – his meetings, his duties, what he ate at mealtimes – nothing is too trivial to recount to her belly.

Sometimes he practices his letters on her, using a finger to trace G-E-N-D-R-Y or A-R-Y-A and gently informing the child those are its parents’ names, or he draws hammers and swords as he promises that he and Mama will teach the little one to fight when it’s older.

She wakes up once in the night to the soothing sounds of Gendry, once again down by her stomach, singing a funny little song about a man climbing a tree that never stops growing. His voice is soft and smooth. She can hear him smiling at the silly lyrics, and she can hear the love in every word.

She interrupts him midway through his verse about the man sleeping in a bird’s nest and hatching the eggs inside. “I’ve never heard that one.”

Gendry startles, looking over at her sheepishly. “Sorry. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“What, you would have let me sleep through this fine show? Where’d you learn that song?”

Gendry pinches the material of her nightshirt between two fingers and rubs it thoughtfully before answering, “My mum used to sing it to me.”

Arya pauses. He doesn’t talk about his mother.

“She was younger than you when she had me,” Gendry says, staring at the fabric in his grasp, “and she couldn’t really afford me, and I doubt she wanted me much in the first place, but she was still my mum, and no matter how poor we were, singing never cost a thing, so she’d do it to make me feel better. She had a nice voice.”

“You must have gotten that from her. I never knew you could sing so well.”

Gendry’s pleased blush is obvious, even in the dark. She rarely compliments him so directly – at least not when they still have all their clothes on. He crawls back up to lay by her side and give her a slow, tender kiss.

“Do you think it knows me?” Gendry asks one, lifting her hand from her side to run his thumb over her knuckles.

“It doesn’t know anything, Gendry,” she points out. “It’s the size of a pea.”

He props himself up on his elbow, and she stirs when she notices how earnest he looks.

“It knows you,” he tells her. “You’re its home. You’re the food it eats and the air it breathes. It must think you’re the whole world.”

The thought is heady, and she smiles and strokes her stomach. (She’s a little ridiculous, too.)

Gendry’s eyes follow the movement.

“It’s just, I never knew my father,” he says. “I don’t know what he looked like or sounded like.”

“Fat and loud,” Arya supplies at once, thinking of old, unimpressive King Robert.

“I’m serious, Arya,” Gendry says, and Arya ducks her head into the pillow and gives his shoulder an apologetic squeeze. “He was a stranger to me. I don’t want that for this one. I want it to know my voice. I want this baby to know I love it, long before it’s ever born.”

“It knows,” Arya promises. “When my mother was expecting Rickon, Maester Luwin told me that a babe still in the womb feels what its mother feels.” He told her that while trying to convince her to behave and not worry her mother, but she doesn’t mention that. “I feel how much you love us both, so our babe feels it, too.”

Gendry melts with relief. He pulls her along as he rolls onto his back.

Arya falls back asleep as Gendry sings another song, this one for her, a ballad about a featherbed.

-

When Arya Farscope discovered an efficient route between Westeros and the far reaches of Essos, trade between the regions exploded. The eighteenth Azure Emperor of Yi-Ti was so delighted by the increased activity between them – particularly where it concerned his own steady access to the highly prized Arbor wine – that he summoned Arya to the imperial court. There he offered her any reward she would like, be it riches, a new fleet, or even an estate on the most scenic shores of the Jade Sea and a position at court.

Instead Arya asked for the Emperor to find her a cook who would be willing to leave Yi-Ti and follow her back to Westeros so that she would never be without access to heavenly Yi-Tish cuisine instead. The Emperor produced Lao Bao.

He was the single angriest man Arya had ever met. Lao Bao would make the Hound look like Brienne of Tarth.

When the Emperor entreated him to meet with Arya as a personal favour – which said something about the respect that humble cook commanded – he cut short her respectful greeting and made her list all the Westerosi meals she could think of, their ingredients, and a rough idea of how to make them. He listened with single-minded focus as she ran through them all, then nodded, turned to the Emperor, and announced that these Westerosi only ate dog food, and it was his duty to travel back with the Farscope woman and teach her people how to cook properly.

So when Arya sailed into port in Oldtown, she was accompanied by not only Lao Bao but his two sons and daughter, all alike in temperament, as well as a ship’s hold full of Yi-Tish produce and seeds for growing it in Westerosi soil. He stayed behind while Arya ventured first to King’s Landing and then to Storm’s End, as she had been uncertain if Gendry would allow her to make her home with him. When she sent for him, he and his children travelled quickly and arrived furiously ranting about how Arya had undersold how terrible the food on this continent was and how primitive their kitchens were.

The residents of Storm’s End felt a wave of patriotic outrage at these foreigners insulting the dishes of their homeland. Until Lao Bao cooked his first dinner for them.

After that, most would willingly label their native meals dog food indeed if he’d just make them more of his noodles or his sweet pork.

(Gendry was convinced Arya was fucking with him the first time she explained what chopsticks were and how to use them.)

The problem is, not long after she sent for Lao Bao in the Reach, she also sent for Hot Pie at the Crossroads. He might not have been willing to leave his warm, comfortable inn to fight in wars, but he was quite happy to accept work in a castle owned by his two best friends.

And when he arrived, after Arya and Gendry’s eager greeting, he went down to the kitchens and met Lao Bao.

Lao Bao who controls his area of the kitchens with an iron fist.

Lao Bao who firmly believes Yi-Tish cuisine is the only food worth eating.

Lao Bao who _fucking hates bread._

Lao Bao argued that he should be solely responsible for the food cooked in Storm’s End so that traditional Westerosi fare would fade away like a bad dream.

Hot Pie argued that people still loved the regular food and anyone who hated bread had no place in a kitchen.

Lao Bao pointed out that he crossed the world to come here at Lady Arya’s request.

Hot Pie retorted that he crossed Westeros _on foot_ with Lady Arya _and _Lord Gendry.

The two did not get along.

They ended up getting into a war of one-upmanship. They both regularly produce dishes, fragrant and exquisite, and send them up to Arya and Gendry, expectantly awaiting them to deliver their verdicts on whose was better.

Gendry keeps insisting that they need to put a stop to this. Arya agrees.

Well.

Arya … used to agree.

But by her fifth month, she’s so hungry all the time.

And it’s all _so good._

When she and Gendry sit down after a long day, there’s a knock on the door, and Hot Pie and Lao Bao come in, personally carrying trays of food.

“Hello, Arry,” Hot Pie says cheerily. “You’re getting so round. How’s the little one treating you tonight?”

“Don’t try kiss up, fat man,” Lao Bao warns. “You don’t get it special because you friends.”

Hot Pie scowls and opens his mouth to argue, but Arya can smell fresh meat in the air.

“Enough fighting. What have you got for us?”

The cooks turn back to her and place trays on the table.

“I made you some nice pies,” Hot Pie announces, placing trays before her and Gendry. “Beef and onion, with my own special gravy. Hearty and warm, just what you need on a night like tonight.”

“Me, I know you two is not _peasants,_” Lao Bao announces, offering up his own dishes. “I do ginger beef, very tasty, and soup. Good for baby.”

Arya claps her hands in glee like a child. She just wants to shovel it all into her gaping maw.

Gendry, on the other hand, looks from Lao Bao to Hot Pie as they wait and cautiously says, “Thank you both. We'll be sure to enjoy it all.”

When neither cook makes any effort to move, he adds, “_Alone._”

The two reluctantly leave, and Gendry stares after them for a long moment, listening as they snipe at each other all the way down the hall.

“We need to settle this thing between them, don’t you th—”

He cuts himself off as he turns to face Arya, who has half a pie in one hand, chopsticks bearing ginger beef in the other, and her cheeks full of soup.

“Guess not.” Gendry runs a hand through his hair.

Arya swallows and puts down the rest of the food. After a quick nibble or two.

“This is nothing,” she dismisses, wiping her mouth. “They’re just competing to see who’s the better cook. It’s not like they’re dangerous.”

“Lao Bao wields a knife better than you do, Arya!”

“For chopping up dinner, not murdering his competition. I’m pretty sure. It’ll be fine, and in the meantime we get double dinner!”

She picks up her pie again and takes a bite. Hot Pie may not be clever, but he’s a genius with pastry.

“I honestly worry it could come to a fight,” Gendry insists.

“It won’t. Trust me, I know what a rivalry gone wrong looks like.” She runs a protective hand over the scars on her expanding stomach, which does not go unnoticed by Gendry. “This will peter out soon enough. If it’s still going on after the baby’s born, then we can step in. In the meantime, let’s just enjoy it.”

“Arya,” Gendry leans in, his hand covering hers, “I know you’ve been hungry lately—”

“Your baby makes me hungry,” Arya reminds him, picking up her chopsticks.

Gendry can’t help but beam, as he has every time she’s said _your baby_ over the last three months, but he schools his features once more.

“—but we can’t just let them keep fighting. We don’t want a battle brewing under our roof.”

“It wouldn’t be a battle. Hot Pie doesn’t own any armour.”

Gendry can’t hold back a laugh at that. “You know what I mean.”

Arya sits back, considering.

“All right. Here are our options. Do you want to intervene, so that they stop fighting and there’s peace under our roof?”

“Yes, I want that.”

“_Or,_” Arya continues, undaunted, and for maximum devastation she cradles the gentle swell of her belly with both hands, “do you want our baby to come out cute and fat?”

Gendry stares at her.

Stares at her belly.

Stares at the table.

Back at the belly.

“They haven’t competed in desserts yet!” he muses while pushing Arya’s plates towards her.

Arya smiles and steals his soup when he’s not looking.

-

It’s nice to get out of Storm’s End for a while. Some lord – she can’t even remember which one – is getting married, and she and Gendry sit in the feasting hall of his keep, laughing and giddy as the celebrations go on around them. She’s vaguely aware of the bride and groom being bundled up and hauled away for the bedding, but the only face she sees is Gendry’s, rosy-cheeked from drink.

“Do you regret not having a bedding at our wedding?” she asks, speaking up to be heard over the drunken roar of the revelers.

“Oh, we most certainly had a bedding,” Gendry corrects her. “It was just a private one.”

“Still, it looks like everyone here enjoyed the bedding ceremony, didn’t they?” Even the bride did. She thinks. She didn’t get a good look at her.

“That’s their own business.” Gendry rolls his eyes and leans in closer. “I’m the only man who’s ever undressed you and that’s how I like it. Though to be fair, starting our marriage by watching you kick the shit out of some men for trying to get familiar might have been fun.”

“Gods, you’re strange,” Arya decides. She loves it. What would she have done with an ordinary man?

Gendry hears that part even though she doesn’t it say it aloud, and he leans in for a kiss. That gets a raucous cheer from the people left in the hall, but they ignore it. He steals a second, briefer kiss and pulls back, glassy-eyed and infatuated.

“I love you,” he informs her with a stupid grin. “Both of you.”

She’s about to reply in kind when the band up in the gallery starts up a new song, the strings swelling in a long, mournful note.

Arya frowns. She knows this song. Where has she—

“You’re wondering why I brought you all here.”

Arya’s blood freezes in her veins. She remembers that voice.

She turns to face the head table. Walder Frey stands at the head table, creaking and malevolent, an evil glint in his eye. How did she not notice him before?

She grabs Gendry by the arm. “We have to get out of here.”

“What for? It’s a wedding. We’ll stay, they’ll take care of us, and we’ll be on our way soon enough.”

She shakes her head. He doesn’t understand. They need to leave.

Walder is still talking. “—and a very fine wedding it is. But it’s more than that. There are always debts that must be paid, and paid in kind.”

He turns his hideous stare on Arya. “Two sons of mine, was it? You’ve only got the one, so I’ll have to get that second debt somewhere else.”

The band plays louder and louder, the Rains of Castamere drowning out everything but the pounding in her ears.

“We have to go now,” she repeats, but she can’t hear herself speak and she can’t look away long enough to check that Gendry’s understood.

“All right, all right,” Gendry’s soothing voice pierces through the deafening song and she’s distantly aware he’s rising to his feet.

She realises a second too late that was exactly the wrong thing to do.

“No!” she shrieks at the same time a hundred crossbow strings hum.

Gendry spasms as bolts pierce him from everywhere at once. His eyes go horribly wide, and he manages to turn and look at Arya, then blood spills from his lips and he crumbles to the ground.

Arya wails at the rapidly spreading pool of blood around the broken figure that used to be her husband. She looks around, searching for any sort of miracle to save him, but the whole room has erupted into chaos and slaughter.

Walder Frey laughs, baring his rotting teeth at her, and then looks at something over her shoulder. She turns and locks eyes with Lame Lothar, limping towards her with a knife in his hand.

She wants to run. She wants to fight. She wants to protect her child, who is now all that’s left of Gendry.

But her limbs feel impossibly heavy, and moving them is like trying to wade through tar.

All she can do is shake her head and beg as Lothar comes closer, but she might as well beg a fire not to burn her. He looms before her, knife poised, aimed at her belly.

She bolts up in bed, screaming.

Someone throws their arms around her and she struggles to get away. It doesn’t matter if it’s Lame Lothar or some other Frey, they want to kill her baby.

“Arya! _Arya!_ What’s wrong? I’m here, Arry, I’m here.”

That gets through, and she looks up at the person holding her. It’s Gendry, frightened but whole, alive. She takes in her surroundings with distraught eyes. This isn’t the Twins. It’s Storm’s End. It’s her bedroom and Gendry’s alive and her baby is safe and so is she.

All the fight drains from her and she wilts in Gendry’s embrace, her wild desperation falling away and leaving only the ragged edges of grief.

She buries her face in his neck and howls as he rocks them both back and forth.

“I’ve got you,” he promises, his voice low and gentle, and it only makes Arya cry harder because she thought that voice was lost to her forever.

He lets her cry herself out. Every time she thinks she’s done, she pictures Walder Frey’s satisfied leer or Gendry’s body being desecrated like Robb’s was and it sets her off again.

Finally her sobs turn to whimpers and then to silence.

“Arya.” His voice sounds hoarse. Did he cry too? “What happened?”

The words are ashes in her mouth. “I dreamt I was at the Red Wedding.”

Gendry’s arms tighten around her at once. Early into their marriage, she told him how she brought down House Frey. She expected someone as good as Gendry would be horrified, no matter how much he loved her, but he was spiteful and relieved, and he told her for years he thought she’d died in the Red Wedding and that House Frey deserved everything they got.

“You got away,” he reminds her. “The Hound knocked you out and you got away.”

Arya shakes her head against him. “Not in the dream. In the dream, it wasn’t my mother or Robb and his wife inside. It was you and me. They shot you like they did Robb. And me…”

“What did they do to you?” Gendry asks, though he clearly doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Did you ever hear what they did to Talisa Stark?” she asks.

“No,” he admits. “Talisa was your brother’s wife, wasn’t she? I just know she was killed with everyone else.”

“I made Black Walder and Lame Lothar tell me before they died,” Arya recalls. “She was pregnant. They stabbed her in the stomach.”

Gendry whimpers.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” he repeats, but now it sounds like he’s reassuring himself. Arya just holds on, keeping him in front of her so he acts as a shield for her belly.

The night doesn’t end with a long conversation where they put all their fears away. They hold each other until the sun comes up, and for most of the following day they’re moody and won’t let each other out of their sight. Some sorrows are carved too deep into a person’s bones to be eased in a night, even by the one they love most in the world.

All they can really do is cling to each other through their pain and promise their child will never know suffering like this.

Resolution is a noble goal but sometimes all you get is someone to hold you through your grief. That’s more than Arya had for a long time.

It’s enough for now.

-

Arya walks barefoot along the sands of Shipbreaker Bay. The infamous rocks of the bay loom large and treacherous out at sea, but the sand along the shore is pale and soft beneath her feet. She’s told it’s very pleasant beach in the summer, though not one where children should be left to swim unmonitored, but it’s still winter and all the Southerners are locked inside, guarding against the bitter breeze. They’re nothing to Arya, though, so she takes her walk and allows the wind to whip against her.

She gets tired more easily these days, so eventually she sits down, where the loose dry sand meets the tightly packed wet sand. Occasionally the tide comes in high enough to touch her toes.

She hears the soft sound of footsteps in the sand behind her, then the shuffle of boots being pulled off. Two strong arms wind their way around her, and she allows herself to be pulled back against a broad chest.

Gendry buries his nose in her hair where she’s tucked it behind her ear and inhales.

“What you doing out here?”

“Thinking,” she replies, staring out at the sea.

“’bout what?”

She looks over her shoulder, at him and at Storm’s End behind him. “Life. My life. How I ended up here.”

“You sure took the long road, didn’t you?” Gendry chuckles, but after a moment he notices Arya doesn’t join in. He takes a look at the castle for himself, then settles in closer to her.

She turns back to face ahead to the sea.

“Did I ever tell you about the worst day of my life?” Gendry asks.

“No,” Arya answers, brows knitting. Would it have been when he was made an orphan or when the Red Woman did what she did to him?

“Well, I was certainly convinced at the time that it was the worst day of my life. Everything was going fine, then suddenly Master Mott tells me he’s sold me to the Night’s Watch for a silver, and I’m to pack my things and get gone.”

Arya stops.

“I spent years apprenticed to the best armourer in King’s Landing, more than I ever had a right to hope for myself, and finally the other shoe dropped. I wouldn’t be a master craftsman, wouldn’t make a name for myself. He threw me out, and I would have to go spend the rest of my life freezing my balls off at the edge of the world, fixing cheap swords and never meeting no one but criminals. Nasty bunch they were, too, and the only person I had to talk to in that whole group was this mad little urchin with a stolen sword.”

Gendry gives her a sweet nudge at that, and she can’t help but smile at his description of her.

“Seventeen years old and I thought my life was over. Somehow I didn’t end up at the Wall, though. I’m the lord of a great big castle, and that mad urchin’s got my baby inside her.” He gives her stomach a reflexive rub, and he smiles into her hair when he gets a kick in return.

“A strong baby, too,” he adds. “I never could have guessed I’d end up here, and neither could anyone else.”

Arya sighs.

“I remember that day. That was the day they murdered my father.”

Gendry pauses behind her, then rests his chin on the crown of her head.

“Yes, it was,” he agrees.

“I can’t say for sure it was the worst day of my life,” says Arya. “There are too many days vying for that honour, but it was certainly up there. Yoren cut my hair and dragged me to the Watch’s camp as soon as it happened. There probably wasn’t even a full hour between hearing him die and meeting you.”

She blinks away tears.

“I would never have met you if he had lived,” she carries on. “Or maybe I would have if he’d defeated Cersei and taken you in as Robert’s son. It wouldn’t have been the same, though, would it?”

“Probably not,” Gendry agrees reluctantly.

There was an intimacy that grew out of being all the other had. If they had met in the Red Keep, they might have gotten along, might even have fallen for each other in time, but it wouldn’t be like this. This is once in a lifetime.

“It’s difficult to square it,” Arya admits. “Saying I would never give this up is like saying I’d see my father dead to get what I want. Saying that I would give anything have him back is the same as saying I’d throw what we have away, you and this child.”

She places a protective hand over her belly. Gendry’s hand joins hers.

“Nothing will ever bring your father back,” Gendry tells her gently. “This is our life, and it was a surprise to us both, but it’s what we have and we’re keeping it. But I don’t think your father would resent you for being happy like this. If this little one lost us both, we’d still want it to grow up and find itself a home, wouldn’t we?”

Arya weakly pinches the skin on the back of his hand. “First of all, the baby is never going to lose us, so don’t even suggest that. When it’s grown, its problem will be getting the fuck rid of us.”

“Sure, sure.” Gendry sounds pleased with this scenario.

Arya strokes her stomach, smiling when she gets a firm little kick beneath her hand. If nothing else, she wishes her father could see the life she’s made for herself. She’s got a high lord and she does rule his castle, but it’s so much more than that. Ned Stark could never have imagined what she’d become.

But she thinks he’d be proud.

“Gendry?”

“Hm?”

“I think we should name this baby Eddard,” she decides.

Gendry presses his cheek to the top of her head and makes a thoughtful sound.

“Eddard’s a fine name,” he considers. “What about if it’s a girl?”

“I think we should name this baby Eddard,” she repeats. Was he not listening closely the first time?

Gendry chuckles. “Right. What was I thinking?”

He shifts, pulling away from her, and moves to kneel beside her, laying his palm back on her bump. “So this is Eddard.”

Arya nods. “Ned for short.”

“Hello, Ned,” Gendry greets. “I can’t wait to meet you. For now, though, I think I should get your mum back inside before you both catch a chill.”

He moves to stand, but Arya grabs him by the hand and yanks him back down, taking advantage of his confusion to straddle him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she challenges. “We’ve never even done it on the beach. Call yourself a storm lord?”

She goes in for a kiss, silencing Gendry’s laughing mouth. Maybe her father would be less proud of this bit, but sometimes she has to think of her own happiness.

-

There are times when a woman wins in spirit but loses in practice.

A while back, Maester Jurne started talking about preparing for Arya’s confinement. Heroically repressing her urge to hit him in the face with a chair, Arya instead told him to hold that thought, went and fetched Gendry, and then requested Jurne explain to her husband why he believed Arya should spend the last months of her pregnancy locked up in a dark, stuffy room where Gendry wouldn’t be allowed to visit her.

The maester never stood a chance.

“Run this by me again,” Gendry requested, arms crossed, looking supremely unimpressed. “Why are you trying to block me from seeing my wife and my baby for months?”

“My lord,” Jurne coaxed, “this is necessary for Lady Arya’s health and the health of the child. A woman far along in her pregnancy must have constant rest and be isolated from the rigours of the outside world.”

“Have you ever met a commoner in your life?” Gendry questioned.

Maester Jurne laughed nervously. “I understand that lowborn women are hardy specimens, but Lady Arya is a noblewoman and has a much more delicate constitution.”

_“I beg your fucking pardon?”_ Arya interjected.

So no confinement.

And yet somehow, she’s basically confined anyways, and it’s her own fault. Yes, she goes down to deal with the lords and other such things, but by her seventh month she’s so large and getting around is such an ordeal that she ends up spending most of her time in her own chambers anyways. She can’t practice her water dancing. She only rides if she needs to get somewhere and can’t go faster than a trot.

At least she’s not sealed off from the world. Gendry still shares their bedchambers (and their bed; the swell of her belly drives that madman into a frenzy). And she gets visitors.

Ser Davos has never been a stranger to Storm’s End, she’s aware, but now they couldn’t keep him away if they tried. The man damn near cried when they broke the news to him, and on each of his many, many visits, he’s brought along some remedy that’s meant to be good for her and the baby or a little toy for when it’s born.

This time, Gendry shepherds him in just as Arya is peevishly throwing a ledger at the door, and both men are forced to duck.

“Sorry,” Arya mutters.

“Not to worry,” Davos says bluffly. “I was feeling a bit tired, but I’m certainly awake now. And how are we today?”

“I’m awake only in the sense that my eyes are open and I’m sitting upright.” Arya sulks, propping her elbows up on the table like a lady shouldn’t.

“Meaning?” Davos probes.

“Meaning I’m bored. I can’t go anywhere with this globe attached to the front of me.” She gestures. “I just have to sit tight all day long. There’s only so many times I can sharpen my blades or go over the accounts before I want to scream. The only other thing to do is needlework, and I’d sooner jump out that window.”

“I understand.” Davos turns to Gendry. “First rule, my boy. When your pregnant wife gets in a mood, before anything else get her a nice cuppa. Calms her down, and you get to leave the room.”

Gendry goes.

Davos takes a seat in the chair next to hers. “Having a rough time, are you?”

“I just sit around all day because I’m enormous.”

“Oh, you’re not that bad,” he reassures her.

“I am. Look at me, do you think I’m wearing this because I like it?” She plucks at her nightgown and her housecoat. It’s the middle of the afternoon. “I can’t fit into my regular clothes. Last week I tried putting on my biggest pair of breeches and I couldn’t get them on.”

“That happens,” he says mildly, “but it is a pain.”

“Do you want to know the worst part?” Arya asks, leaning in to confess something shameful.

“What’s that?” he whispers.

“I lied. They were Gendry’s breeches.” She grips the armrests on her chair and drops her head.

Davos chuckles. “I can’t do much for your wardrobe, I’m afraid, but I think I can help with the boredom.”

Arya perks up in spite of herself. “Tell me.”

Davos produces a little wooden figurine from an inner pocket of his coat. “I made this for your little one. I find whittling very calming. I can spend hours on a small piece like this. It clears my head right up. If you like, I can teach you to carve as well, stags and wolves to be held in sweet little hands someday soon.”

Arya is glad to have something to occupy her, and Davos spends the rest of the afternoon and much of the evening showing her how it’s done. She takes to it happily. She’s glad to make toys for her child.

(And eventually toys for her husband, but that’s a story for another day.)

-

After finding out she was pregnant, one of the first things she did, after screwing Gendry’s brains out in celebration, was to send for the lawbooks of the Stormlands and of Dorne. From the start, she was determined that the baby, boy or girl, would inherit, and what was more, that any eldest child of any family, boy or girl, would inherit as well. She would have Dornish inheritance law or she would have nothing.

Gendry agreed. Of course he agreed. She wouldn’t have married him, let alone agreed to bear his child, if he weren’t the type to agree. But he misses the bigger picture sometimes because he’s not fully used to power. When she first proposed the measure to him, he said they’d proclaim it right away. He looked at her like she was crazy when she told him she wanted to put it to a vote with the bannermen.

She’s had to make him understand. They need to make the lords agree to this. If they just imposed it, there would be outcry, maybe even rebellion. Even if they went along with it, they’d be bitter in their hearts, and perhaps when she and Gendry were gone, they would remember the laws as being forced on them by the upjumped bastard lord’s little tyrant wife and overturn them. She needs them to vote on this so that it is recorded in their history books that they agreed to this. They swore to it fairly, not just for her child but for theirs too.

Politics, rather annoyingly, move slowly. If they had had the vote the day after she found out she was expecting, it would have gone down in flames, ridiculed and then forgotten. It has taken seven months of politicking and campaigning among them to get them to the Round Hall today. Even now, she isn’t certain they’ll succeed, but she’s run out of time. This has to pass today.

Ser Humfrey Wagstaff is standing to speak. He plainly loves the sound of his own voice. “I have a son of my own, Lord Baratheon. I have cared for him as a father ought to, raised him as my heir. Should I go home and tell him that I am stripping him of his birthright to elevate his sister, who is trained for nothing? How could I ever face him after such a betrayal?”

He grips his heart like a mummer. Arya grips the edges of the table.

“I don’t know how many times you need it explained to you,” says Gendry, and she can clearly _hear_ the rolling of his eyes. “The law will only be mandatory for children born after its passing. Your son and heir will be grandfathered in, unless you _choose_ to replace him with his big sister. And any eldest daughter born hereafter will have plenty of time to be raised as an heiress, so no one needs to worry about elevating an unworthier child to this _noble_ office.”

He’s doing well. Arya wants to add on to his words, but instead she focuses on controlling her breathing. She’s been mercifully spared of her regular cramps these last nine months, but now they return with a vengeance. Twelve hours they’ve been locked in this hall, and the pains only get worse and more frequent.

Gendry notices how rigid she’s gone. She’s getting worse at hiding her discomfort. He leans in and addresses her quietly while Lord Selwyn Tarth speaks in support of the law.

“You all right?”

“Wagstaff is just pissing me off. I wish he’d shut his mouth once in a while.”

Gendry looks unconvinced, but she schools her features, and eventually he nods and turns back to the debate.

She does feel bad for lying, but she knows if she told the truth he’d lose his mind and send the lords away. She won’t allow that. This vote cannot wait. If this child is a girl, she won’t allow her to be born into a world where the law says she is less than her hypothetical brothers. If it’s a boy, the law will die at once, as not even their supporters will care much about championing heiresses when there’s a healthy heir to the Stormlands already. It might not matter for their son, but that son would have a daughter someday, or a granddaughter, and her rights would be denied because Arya failed her today.

So she breathes through the pain instead. This isn’t worse than being stabbed. She can handle it.

Lord Peasebury runs his mouth. He’s against it, naturally.

_Shut up, shut up, shut up,_ Arya chants to herself. She wishes she could throw up on him again.

She’s reliving the memory of the look on his face when she stained his boots when there’s a gush of wetness between her thighs, and not the fun kind she gets when Gendry smiths shirtless.

Arya has never prayed she’s pissed herself before, but she does now.

She knows she hasn’t.

Right, well, that’s the end of the debate.

“My lords,” she raises her voice. She wishes she could stand to get their attention, but if she does they’ll see the wet mark between her legs and all hell will break loose. “We have been at this all day. There can be nothing left to be said at this hour. It is time we take a vote.”

Gendry grips her hand.

Gendry’s here. Everything’s going to be fine.

There are thirty-five houses sworn to House Baratheon. They need eighteen ayes to change the Stormlands for good.

The vote passes around the room.

House Peasebury votes nay, of course. Fuck him.

House Wagstaff, nay. Fuck him, too.

House Caron, aye. Lord Caron is a grizzled old beast, but he admires strength and he knows any daughter of his house deserves whatever she can get.

House Dondarrion, aye. Lord Berric was lost to them so long ago, and all they’ve had was his female cousin to fill his shoes.

Round and round it goes. Arya and Gendry are rigid in their seats, mostly for the same reasons.

Seventeen to seventeen. Of fucking course. But smiles are creeping across Gendry and Arya’s faces because there’s only one house left to vote.

House Seaworth. Ser Davos is going to be so happy to meet the baby.

His eyes crinkle, and he smiles a grandfatherly smile. He speaks so everyone can hear him.

“Aye!”

Uproar.

Half the lords begin to argue, and the other half begin to cheer over them. Gendry moves in for a hard kiss, laughing into her lips.

“We did it,” he sighs. “We bloody did it. We’ve done right by our Ned.”

Tears burn her eyes, and she happily lets Gendry wipe them away.

He’s right. They did it, for Ned and for all their descendants, for every child that will be born in the Stormlands.

“Gendry,” she says as quietly as she can manage, “we need to send them away now.”

“What?” He laughs disbelievingly. “We can’t just kick them out now.”

“We can send them to the quarters we’ve assigned them, and ask them to leave at first light.”

“Why?”

“Because the baby’s coming.”

Gendry stares for a moment, not taking it in. Then the penny drops. His mouth falls open and his eyes go round.

“It’s- you’re- are you sure?” he babbles, looking left and right as if some sign of what to do will magically appear. “Are you feeling pains? For how long?”

“Let’s see, we’ve been here, what, twelve hours?” Arya recalls. “Then it would have been about an hour before that.”

Gendry cannot process that, despite his clear best efforts. “Thirtee- _thirteen hours?_ You’ve been in labour for thirteen bloody hours?”

“I hear labour lasts longer with the first child,” Arya says. “That’s lucky, or else it would have slid out onto the flagstones.”

_“Arya.”_

“I know, I know. You shift the bannermen and meet me in our chambers. I’ll send for the midwives. And someone for the puddle.”

“What puddle?” Gendry looks down and sees the remnants of her waters pooling on the stones. “Shit.”

“See you soon!” With a last smacking kiss, Arya raises herself from her chair (with some difficulty) and strides out, dignifiedly refusing to acknowledge the wet spot down the bottom of her dress.

As it turns out, childbirth is not the best time to maintain one’s dignity. By the time Gendry races into their bedchamber, wild-eyed, she’s removed her now stained dress and is sitting on her birthing stool in her nightgown, her chief midwife inspecting her between her legs.

“Did I miss it?” Gendry asks, breathless. “It took forever to send them off. I haven’t missed it, have I?”

Arya rolls her eyes.

“Yes, Gendry, it’s already born, I just thought I’d give Hilda here a show.”

Hilda, wizened expert that she is, doesn’t even look up.

“Won’t be for a good long while, m’lord,” she says from her spot between Arya’s thighs. “Her water may have broken but her pains are still far apart and barely speeding up. You can go get some rest.”

“He cannot,” Arya says at the same time Gendry starts to protest. “He’s staying.”

Hilda makes a face. “Men get in the way, that’s my experience. Sometimes they think they want to be there, but when they see what birth is like, they get squeamish.”

“I can handle it,” Gendry insists, moving to Arya’s side.

“Even if he can’t, he will anyway,” says Arya. “I’m a bit squeamish at the thought of pushing an entire baby out of me, but I’m not running away, so he’s not allowed to either.”

Hilda is unimpressed. “Suit yourself. Now, get up, time to take a walk to urge the baby down. Your lord husband can accompany you.”

For some reason, even though there was half a day between her first contractions and her water breaking, Arya imagined once she got into the birthing chamber it would all just fly along and the babe would slide right out of her.

No.

They wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

She knew giving birth would be painful, but she didn’t imagine it would be painful and dull.

It’s either ever-escalating pain or mindless tedium. She has time to whittle yet another wolf, though a couple times she nearly slices her own finger off when a contraction takes her by surprise. Gendry attempts to distract himself with some grain reports, though she doubts he makes much progress when he’s asking how she’s feeling every thirty seconds.

The sun peeks over the horizon, and rises higher and higher, and still no baby.

Arya’s taking her ten thousandth walk, and it’s interrupted when she doubles over from another sharp pang, the worst one yet.

“It’s fine, Arya,” Gendry soothes, stroking her hair through it. “I’m right here.”

Arya looks up at him, her face a rictus of pain, then she inches around to face Hilda.

“Make him go away,” she orders through clenched teeth.

“Arya!” Gendry protests as Hilda’s two assistant midwives appear at his shoulders and attempt to lead him out of the room.

“You did this to me,” Arya accuses as if ‘this’ was a knife to the ribs. A single contraction is far less painful than being stabbed, but a full day’s worth of them are making her miss the bloody Waif.

Gendry very wisely allows himself to be ushered out, although he does call over his shoulder that he’ll be nearby the whole time.

It would be wiser if he went somewhere far away, because she might just kill him if this continues to drag on. She knows she’s hurting him by banishing him right now, but quite frankly she’s hurting the most of anyone in this castle at the moment, so he can just deal with it.

Time continues to crawl miserably along. Her pains grow more frequent and more terrible.

“This isn’t normal, is it?” she asks Hilda as the midwife adjust the mound of straw beneath her birthing chair. She’s talked to women since she found out she was expecting, and she never heard of such a long labour.

Hilda sits back on her creaking knees. “It’s not often we have such a long wait, m’lady, that’s true enough, but I wouldn’t worry meself if I was you. I’ve had women who laboured two days to birth perfect little dumplings, and I’ve seen women who lost everything before I even had time to get through the door.”

Arya wonders what losing this babe would do to her. Or to Gendry, for that matter. “Do you honestly think it will be all right?”

“The first one’s the hardest, my girl,” Hilda promises, giving her knee a comforting squeeze. “Nothing I’ve seen here frightens me. It’s just that these Baratheons make great big babes, and you’re such a wee thing. Your body’s taking a long time to get ready. I expect next time I’m delivering one of yours, it’ll all go a lot quicker.”

Arya opens her mouth to speak, then crouches as the pains come once again. Hilda coaches her to breathe as her assistants take hold of her hands and let her squeeze the life out of them.

When it passes, she sits back up and someone hands her a goblet of cool water. She drinks most of it and throws the remnants in her own flushed face. Then she settles back down.

“I remember my mother carrying my youngest brother, Rickon,” Arya remembers. “I was only four or five, didn’t really understand anything beyond there being a baby in my mother’s tummy. She just sort of disappeared for part of the morning while my father told us to wait for something special, and then there was a new brother for us to look at. She told my sister and me much later that Tullys have good hips for child-bearing.”

“How about Starks?” Hilda asks. “How are their hips?”

Arya’s face falls. She thinks of her Aunt Lyanna. Jon’s poor mother. Dead in her bed, though her son survived. She can’t tell anyone about that, though.

Besides, that was different. She was locked up in a tower in Dorne, frightened and alone. Arya is in her own home, with her husband nearby.

Fuck it, she wants her husband back.

Before she can alert anyone to this decision, the pains come again. The women ease her through it while Hilda inspects her again.

“The pains are close together,” she announces, “and you’re about as big as you’re going to get. I think it’s time you start pushing, m’lady.”

“Where the hell is Gendry?” Arya demands while trying not to scream.

“You sent him out of the room,” a midwife reminds her.

“Well, go and get him!” Arya insists. “He’s not getting out of this that easily!”

But if he looks happy and calm, like he’s gotten any rest at all while she’s been going through this, she’ll kill him herself.

The midwife dashes out and returns barely a minute later with an exhausted, panicked Gendry. Good.

“Is it time? She said it’s time. Is it time?”

“It’s time,” Hilda confirms. “Now I need you to push, m’lady. Ready?”

Arya nods as Gendry rushes to her side and takes her hand.

_“Push!”_

Arya strains like she’s taking the world’s most evil shit. Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, her apologies to the Waif, this is the worst thing ever.

“Good, now take a breath.”

Arya slumps in her chair. Gendry presses his lips to her temple.

“I love you,” he chants under his breath. “I love you, I love you. Thank you for this.”

She turns to him. “Come hold my other hand. I don’t want to break your good hand while I do this.”

Gendry gets up and goes around to her other side. “This is how I know she loves me,” he informs Hilda, who smiles and rolls her eyes.

“All right, time to push again, let’s do it, there we go.”

“Ah!” Arya wails against the horrible unrelenting pressure between her legs.

“Very good, that’s it. I can see the head.”

“You can?” Gendry asks, watching her with wide, hopeful eyes.

“This one’s got a nice head of hair,” Hilda notes with a wink.

“Our child has hair,” Gendry tells Arya with a silly smile.

“And a big fucking head,” Arya retorts.

She keeps on pushing, which is fucking horrible. She’s pretty sure her mother downplayed it to avoid scaring her and Sansa off because if any woman knew what this was like, there would be no babes ever again.

Gendry is right there beside her the whole time, babbling comfort and love and gratitude, manfully not complaining while she crushes his hand in hers.

“You’re doing so well, m’lady, we just need one last big push, just one more. C’mon, three, two, one, push!”

Arya screams as she bears down, praying to all the bloody gods to end this, and then finally, finally, the pressure passes and she’s free.

Arya pants desperately, and she and Gendry stare at Hilda and wait for something, anything to happen. What’s meant to happen now? Why isn’t she saying anything? Is the—

A sharp cry splits the air.

It’s the most beautiful thing Arya’s ever heard.

Hilda laughs. “It’s a girl, m’lady! A beautiful baby girl!”

A girl.

Her baby girl.

The Lady Paramount of the Stormlands.

Hers and Gendry’s daughter.

She and Gendry lock eyes, and there are no words, but there don’t need to be. They have a daughter.

Hilda holds the babe up. She felt enormous coming out of her, but in the light she’s only tiny. She doesn’t look like a baby yet. Just a little purple wrinkled thing covered in bodily slime, still attached by a hideous cord.

“That … is …” Gendry says, breathless with awe, “the most … _disgusting_ thing I’ve ever seen.”

Arya bursts into laughter.

It’s true, it’s really true. She’s a horrible little lump, and Arya would kill or die for her in an instant.

Gendry throws his arms around her, and they laugh like a couple of people who haven’t slept in two days.

There’s still the afterbirth to be pushed out, though that’s basically nothing after an entire baby, and Gendry is thrilled and terrified to cut the cord, and Arya still has to pass a last round of blood, but when that’s over with Arya is shuffled off to bed while the midwives clean her little girl up.

Finally, they bring the baby over to her, and Arya can only stare, spellbound, as the new love of her life is laid in her arms.

She was worth it. All of it.

She giggles helplessly when the babe is brought to latch onto her teat, feeding. It’s strange and she likes it. Arya knows she’ll be busy, and they’ll need a wet nurse for her, but she’s earned a few days of rest and feeding will be all hers for now.

There’s a knock at the door, and the midwives usher in Maester Jurne.

“I understand there’s a new lady about,” he says softly.

“There is,” says Gendry, barely looking away from his hungry child.

“Congratulations to you both. I will send word of the good news to the storm lords, and to King’s Landing and Winterfell. Oh, and Lao Bao has sent up some seaweed soup, which he says is good for new mothers. Surprisingly, he is willing to concede that seaweed in this ‘dog country’ is acceptable.”

“Thank you, maester,” Arya murmurs.

“Do we have a name for the little lady?” he inquires.

“Eddard,” Arya answers. “Eddard Baratheon.”

Jurne pauses.

“That is,” he searches for the right word, “typically a _man’s_ name.”

“Yes, I noticed,” Arya agrees, enraptured with the tiny hand laying on her breast.

Maester Jurne, who clearly never learns, tries to appeal to Gendry. “My lord, perhaps our little lady would prefer a more _appropriate_ name.”

His efforts are wasted. Gendry is lost in his own little world.

“Is your name Eddard?” he coos, leaning in close. “Are you my little Ned? Yes, you are! Yes, you are!”

Maester Jurne gives up. “Lady Eddard it is. Congratulations again to you both.”

He leaves, and after a last onceover Hilda and her midwives leave too. Gendry and Arya watch quietly as Ned drinks her fill and pulls away from Arya with a little sigh.

“Do you want to hold her?” Arya asks Gendry.

He lights up. “Can I?”

“You’re allowed to. She’s yours as well.”

She carefully transfers Ned into his arms, both of them aware of how small and fragile she is. When Gendry’s got her, he’s thunderstruck.

“She’s perfect,” he decides. “The most perfect little thing there ever was.” He raises the arm supporting her. “Why’s her head shaped like that?”

Ned’s soft little skull tapers to a point. Arya knows all babies come out like that and it’ll pass soon enough, but outrage flares at the suggestion there’s anything wrong with her girl.

“It’s shaped like that because I had to push that giant Baratheon head out my tiny Stark body, you son of a bitch.”

Gendry frowns and covers Ned’s ear. “Don’t swear in front of my baby.”

“I can do what I like,” Arya argues. “I’m her mother.”

“Yeah, well, I’m her father.”

The weight of their words hits them at the same time. There’s a baby in the world who has Arya for a mother and Gendry for a father.

“She’s ours,” Gendry says. “She’s our daughter. We’re her parents. Gods, she’s so small.”

He reaches one big finger to stroke the small length of her arm, and Arya hears his breath hitch when Ned, without opening her eyes, grasps his finger in her tiny little fist.

“She’s ours,” Gendry repeats, his voice trembling, tears forming in his eyes. “And we’re hers. We’re all she’s got, Arya. We are her family.”

The dam bursts and they both cry openly while their Ned nestles in her father’s arms, undisturbed.

“Look at us,” Arya complains, her words thick and wet, “three people in this room and the only one not crying is the baby.”

“What useless parents we’re gonna be,” Gendry says, wiping his tears on his shoulder.

“The worst,” Arya adds, also wiping her tears on Gendry’s shoulder.

But they smile at each other and look back down at their sleeping Ned.

They’ll figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> The woodpecker knows what she did. And credit to her for the pregnancy nightmares bit.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr [@arsenicandfinelace](http://arsenicandfinelace.tumblr.com/).


End file.
